"Visopsys (VISual OPerating SYStem) is an alternative operating system for PC-compatible computers, developed almost exclusively by one person, Andy McLaughlin, since its inception in 1997. Andy is a 30-something programmer from Canada, who, via Boston and San Jose ended up in London, UK, where he spends much of his spare time developing Visopsys. We had the great fortune to catch up with Andy via email and ask him questions about Visopsys, why he started the project in the first place, and where is it going in the future."

What we need is some kind of universal driver standard that can be shared across all operating systems. Ideally this would be in source form and the layer could be optimised away by the compiler. This way a driver wouldn't be written for "Windows X" but instead for the "2012 PC driver standard". The OS would implement the standard and immediately support numerous compatible hardware devices. It's a pipe dream though. For it's part, MS would never participate, and their cooperation would be pretty much mandatory.

This has already been tried; it's called UDI (Uniform Driver Interface). Unfortunately, it's exceptionally hard to get everyone on board with such an effort. The open source community largely ignored it, because it allowed the proliferation of binary drivers to continue. None of the other OS vendors had any incentive to participate in it because they don't have a problem getting manufacturers to create drivers for them. It's a shame, because there's also a reference implementation available, but no one seems to care. Perhaps all of the hobby OS's should work to create drivers for this API to allow driver sharing. If you'd like to check UDI out, here're a few links: